How to start in street photography
Hong Kong is a place with a lot of people but as a small city, there is no week that in one of my workshops I see some of my students taking pictures on the street or better yet, teaching others to photograph, teaching others what I taught them one day.
The first lesson I usually give in my workshops for beginners is a practical lesson, I try to avoid any technical content that tend to be very boring and honestly almost none of us like to listen to lessons that we do not understand anything. Anyway, the first thing you learn in my street photography workshops if you are still a beginner is how to be invisible, go into a scene, photograph it and come out of it as if you had never been there before.
Be invisible, go into a scene, photograph it and come out of it as if you had never been there before.
With this type of exercise you will improve your street photography by leaps and bounds, it is easy to do (and to see these scenes in the street) and the result in your photography will be quite good, catching the attention of those who see your images. I have two phrases deep in my head that I repeat over and over again to my students:
If you know what you are looking for, it will be much easier to find it. - Miguelitor
Practice until it becomes an instinctive act. - Miguelitor
Street Photography Challenge
How to start in Street Photography
How to start in street photography - Invisibility
What we must do first is to be invisible, to go unnoticed, the more unnoticed you go the better results you will get with your camera and the more comfortable you will feel when photographing and this is learned by shooting, practicing, the more you practice the more tricks you will learn to go unnoticed.
You will pretend to be a tourist
You will pretend you are talking to someone else.
You will shoot from the waist
You will shoot from the side
There are thousands...
Although we already know that the best camera is the one we have at the moment, I am one of those who support and believe that the camera we should have should be small, remember that:
Small cameras but big ideas - Miguelitor
My cameras
As you can see, none of my cameras is excessively big, all three are very fast and above all, what I like most about all three is that you go unnoticed.
How to start in Street Photography
How to start in street photography - Balance
Well, we already know that almost everything we need to get good photos is to go unnoticed, but now let's create an exercise in which we know what we are looking for, let's balance our image with two subjects and close the shot with a wall, and thus avoid noises that give us nothing in benefit of our photo.
Look at this image I made in one of my workshops in Lisbon, Portugal.
I like to use this photograph as an example because both people in the image are looking at me and know that I am photographing them ... or not!
I liked this image since I saw it and I knew I had a good picture, it is simple, it is balanced, there is contrast between the two subjects (soon we will talk about juxtaposition by contrast) and moreover, the viewer will understand what is in the picture, it is a very simple picture but it will always be liked.
How did I take this photograph?
I saw them from far away and I already knew that I would take a picture of them, but at no time did I make eye contact with them, they saw me approach, I put myself between the two and photograph them, but, as I say, at no time did I make eye contact with them so as not to lose the picture I wanted to take.
I took two pictures (both the same) and so as not to leave those subjects thinking about why I had photographed them, I approached the door between them and started to touch it while nodding my head, as if to say, what a good quality wood!
Once I finished with the show of dissimulation I left the area and saw how the gentleman got up and knocked on the door, wondering what on earth had caught the attention of the photographer who photographed it and then he touched the door.
No visual contact with the subjets you are going to photograph to - Miguelitor
Why is the exercise of invisibility a good exercise to improve your street photography?
Invisibility in Street Photography
Somehow you have to start photographing, you have to have a criteria, an orientation of what you want to photograph and how you are going to photograph it and this way you will learn much faster. This exercise will make us much more selective when shooting and not come home with 300 photos that we have shot at random during the day, once you develop and practice this exercise you will see pairs of two on all sides and you will improve the results giving some more creativity to your photos.
How can I practice the invisibility exercise to improve my street photography?
The exercise is simple, as street photographers we have to have more eyes than the rest of the mortals, we are attentive to everything around us and a little more, remember that if you know what you are looking for it will be much easier to find it and if we know that we are looking for two subjects to put them into our frame, you will see that during the day you will come across dozens of them, yes, dozens!
Once you locate your subjects you have to put yourself in between them and at a distance (depending on the lens you use) in which both of them fit in the frame, one on each side of it.
Avoid eye contact with them
Shoot and walk away
It's that easy.
You may not get good pictures at first but don't worry, we all have very bad pictures, even the best photographers, this is just a training exercise, because yes, in street photography as in sports you have to train if you want to see an improvement.
Do I have to go out only and exclusively to do this exercise to improve my street photography?
When I explain this exercise or someone acquires a challenge I am always asked the same question.
Should I only go out to photograph two people?
And the answer is NO
Go out, photograph whatever you want and however you want but keep in mind that this exercise will be very useful for your development as a street photographer.
Conclussion
If you know what you are looking for it will be much easier to find it, and practice until it becomes an instinctive act join the street photography challenge for the cost of a coffee and we are in contact for a month you will see how you will get those images you always wanted to get.
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See you on the streets